The Provision of Dysphagia Assessment Following Acute Stroke in Non-metropolitan New South Wales and Victoria.

The second phase consisted of semi-structured interviews with eight clinicians fromthe full range of these service types, which allowed further exploration of issues identified from Phase One. The third phase of the research was undertaken in the form of two small focus groups, allowing verification of the data.This thesis is the first study to examine the provision of dysphagia assessment following acute stroke in non-metropolitan New South Wales and Victoria. It provides data indicating that not all speech pathology services are created equal.xxiContext was found to play a significant role in the manner in which speech pathology services were provided to patients with dysphagia following acute stroke. This suggested that some patients may be receiving a less than optimal service, based on resourcing rather than current best practice. This finding has implications for the equity of the availability, quality of service and outcomes for such patients based on their geographical location. The findings presented in this thesis have potential application not only to the local context in which the data were collected, but also in considering the provision of dysphagia services to geographically and resource-dispersed populations on both a national and international level.